Great news keep coming from the red planet. Curiosity has opened her eyes for the first time. She took a good look around her and decided that life is good in Mars—albeit a bit lonely.

Updated: New images coming in, including panoramas and high definition images from the descent.

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The Navigation Cameras—the eyes that will guide her around Mars—have been activated and they are beaming perfect images down to Earth. The left camera may have had a problem at the beginning, because at first the image was all dark and with a weird white artifact. It actually looked as if she had eyelids and was slowly waking up.

This didn't happened with the right camera, which was sending perfect images from the moment it was turned on.

I can imagine someone at mission control singing Oh You Pretty Things! in his or her head. "Wake up you sleepy head, put on some clothes, shake up your bed..."

The first two images sent by the left Navcam—on the left—looked black and showed a weird artifact. The rest of the pictures look perfect.

Both navigation cameras are operative now.

Update: The ongoing press conference is revealing some good stuff. JPL has received the first high resolution video frames of the descent, taken by the MARDI camera. It's pretty amazing material. The final video is going to look fantastic.

They have also created new low-resolution panoramas made from the thumbnails obtained by the Navcams. We will have the first high definition panorama of Curiosity's surroundings in a day or two, but this looks so good already:

Expand to see the full image.

Here's a preview of what the panorama will look like when done. It's made partially with low resolution images:

Expand to see the full image.

Even more spectacular is the spherical projection of the panorama, showing Curiosity in full:

The team is pointing out that this looks very Earth-like. An image that could have been taken at the Mojave Desert.

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The photos also reveal surface areas that have been excavated by the thrusters of the sky crane. This is a bonus, as we can see things without even having to start scooping material. NASA's scientists say that they can see bedrock under the gravel.